SHREVEPORT, La. — Morris Claiborne stared into the mirror and saw a 6-0, 180-pound homesick college freshman with no set career path. He had played quarterback, wide receiver and defensive back in high school. He was recruited to LSU as “an athlete” and needed to settle in somewhere. Now, at the ripe old age of 19, he had come to a fork in the football road. A decision, perhaps the decision of a lifetime, was at hand.

LSU coach Les Miles had instructed Claiborne to alternate working with the Tigers offense and defense. Two days with the wide receivers, Miles decreed, then two with the defensive backs. Do so until further notice, the coach instructed.

For two days, Claiborne found himself a soldier in an army of receivers. The next two days, he discovered he was one of only a handful of cornerback hopefuls.

He did the math.

Then a graduate assistant whispered in his ear. “Receivers your size are a dime a dozen,” he told the freshman. “Around here, around anywhere, you are big for a cornerback.”

When the time came to rejoin the offense, Claiborne continued to practice with the defense. Miles called him in for a conference and suggested the freshman rejoin the offense. “Yes sir,” Claiborne dutifully responded before asking to make his case to remain with the defense.

Join the offense, the coach said. But Miles retreated to the film room to study tape of the wannabe corner in drills. It didn’t take long for him to reach a simple conclusion.

“You stay on defense,” Miles told Claiborne.

By the time his college career ended three seasons later, Claiborne was a two-year starter at cornerback, interceptor of 11 passes and winner of the Jim Thorpe Award, which christened him college football’s top defensive back. Ten days ago, the Cowboys traded up in the first round of the NFL draft to grab Claiborne, the player they deemed the biggest impact defensive player in the pack.

Wonderlic test be damned. So what if Claiborne, as has been well publicized, bolted from the IQ test during the NFL combine, and his low score has been gossiped about as if it was a scarlet letter?

In one simple freshman exercise, Claiborne had proved he could calculate, assess a situation and make a cogent logical case for his position.

“Nobody ever said I was dumb until this whole thing, sir,” Morris Claiborne said, seated in the living room of his family home just down the street from where the Independence Bowl and Interstate 20 meet on Shreveport’s west side.

“The whole thing is crazy. I’m a football player. I just want to play in the NFL.”

Something special

Morris Lee Claiborne, named for an invalid great aunt, prefers the shadows to the limelight. Always has.

So it was at LSU, where as a sophomore, he started at cornerback opposite Patrick Peterson, a Heisman Trophy candidate who would win the Thorpe in 2010. Last season, the other LSU cornerback, Tyrann Mathieu, also known as “Honey Badger,” was a Heisman Trophy finalist.

The chatty Peterson and Mathieu attracted the television cameras, microphones, notepads and most of the national chatter. That served Claiborne just fine. He believes his teammates got what they deserved. He was never the least bit envious. He knew his time would come.

“I’m used to flying under the radar,” Morris said in a relative outburst.

“He was always my quiet one,” said his mother, Opal.

“He was always a momma’s boy,” interrupted his father, Robert, a retired mailman. “He never got into anything.”

Quiet around everyone but his namesake, Opal’s aunt, Morris Carol Robinson, who suffered a stroke at a relatively early age.

“Most kids were scared of her and her wheelchair but not Morris,” his mother said. “He took to her something fierce.”

Morris, 22, is the youngest of the Claiborne children. The oldest, Crystal is 25. Terrell is 24 and Brandon 23.

Husher Calhoun coached all the Claiborne boys at Fair Park High. He said the older Claiborne brothers were good athletes, but Morris had something special.

“He was the one who always wanted to get better,” Calhoun said. “From the first day I met him he’d always ask, “What do I need to do?’ ’’

Calhoun was impressed when the youngest Claiborne showed up for workouts every summer day between eighth and ninth grades.

“Some boys waited for rides,” Calhoun said. “Morris walked to get to school. He wanted to get to work.”

But it was more than the daily mile walk to workouts that gave Claiborne a head start. His athletic gifts were bountiful. He would be a starting receiver as a high school freshman. That same school year, he would be the sixth man on Fair Park’s state championship basketball team. Before he graduated from high school, the boy named for the great aunt in the wheelchair, was a state champion sprinter.

Morris Claiborne had been a relative late starter when it came to competitive sports. It wasn’t until middle school that he ventured outside the family comfort zone.

“Before that, playing cost money in youth leagues,” he said. “Money was tight. I played in the front yard with my brothers. There was plenty of competition.”

Morris played on one peewee league football team. The coach paid his fees. He picked him up before every game and delivered him back home after. It was a small price to pay for success for the G-Men Tigers.

That’s about the time local high school coaches first caught a whiff of what was to be.

In his sophomore season at Fair Park, Morris played receiver and quarterback. In his junior and senior seasons, he played mostly quarterback and defensive back.

Calhoun, who coached Claiborne as a freshman, moved to nearby Woodlawn High the next year.

“Morris beat us by one point that season,” said Calhoun, who remains close to Morris and is the godfather of his son, Little Morris, 2. “We were up, and he scored the winning touchdown. Everyone on our team had a chance to hit him once, but we couldn’t stop him.”

After the game, Claiborne and his old coach met at midfield.

“Good game,” Calhoun told his former player.

“Thanks,” the player responded.

“You do know Morris doesn’t say much,” Calhoun said.

A hidden injury

Morris Claiborne was on track to graduate with his class at LSU. He said he planned on returning for his senior season until he won the Thorpe Award in December.

He made himself eligible for the draft in January.

By the time he picked up the Thorpe trophy in Oklahoma City on his 22nd birthday in early February, his name had become a staple near the top of NFL mock drafts.

His quickness, instincts and athletic ability were never in question. He seemed equally comfortable lining up almost nose-to-nose against a receiver or falling back into coverage.

“He’s as talented and as physically gifted of an athlete as we’ve been around,” LSU coach Miles told media inquisitors. “He’s really very special.”

High praise from the coach of a program littered with talent and physical gifts.

But there was a knock. Detractors complained he missed too many tackles.

Perhaps torn ligaments in his left wrist was mostly responsible for that. Claiborne injured the wrist in the second quarter of the Nov. 5 game at Alabama.

Claiborne played the final five games in pain. On a scale of one-to-10, he said his agony was “off the charts.”

At the NFL combine in late February, site of the infamous Wonderlic, he finally confessed he had an injured wrist.

That sent NFL teams into a tizzy. X-rays were ordered immediately. Claiborne found himself in a room with the X-rays posted along a wall while team doctors lined up to poke and pull the wrist.

“Does this hurt?” they would ask one by one as they jerked the wrist into and out of improbable positions.

“Yes it does, sir,” he would reply through gritted teeth as calmly and patiently as he could.

“The combine is an experience I would never want to go through again,” Claiborne volunteered. “For three days I was pulled in all different directions. I don’t think I got eight hours sleep. Total. It was awful.”

Claiborne pulled out his smart phone and offered up before and after photos of the X-rays of the damaged wrist that kept him off the field at the Cowboys’ training sessions this weekend. He underwent surgery March 23, the day after NFL scouts visited LSU to watch workouts. The wrist remains in a cast. It is expected to be healed by the time training camp kicks off in the summer.

As for whatever damage may have been done to his reputation by the Wonderlic experience, Claiborne said he has no regrets.

“Knowing me, I would have done the same thing again,” he said. “Sometimes you have to make a choice on which way to go. I can live with the decision. I can live with all of my decisions.”

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Morris Lee Claiborne

Born: Feb. 7, 1990

Draft: Selected by the Cowboys with the sixth pick of the first round. First defensive player chosen in the 2012 draft.

Fact: Only one Shreveport high school player was ever drafted higher. Terry Bradshaw of Woodlawn High was the first player selected in 1970.

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